Anfield Until The End 16/17

It's Been Nice Knowing You: Brad Smith

I'm starting to not like Bournemouth too much anymore. I mean, it's cool to get £21m for both Jordon Ibe and Brad Smith, but I had a bit of an irrational hope that they'd both succeed here. Oh well then, let's get onto it, since there is a buy back and sell on clause.

At the age of 14, he moved from his home country, Australia, to England, for reasons unknown. But they were most likely football reasons. While playing for his local high school's side, Liverpool started to scout him and later accepted him into the Academy.

Smith got a taste of first team action, sitting on the bench of the 2-1 loss to Manchester City on 26 December 2013, being promoted to the first team just a week before. Only three days later, he finally did make his senior debut against Chelsea in the 59th minute, taking off the, at the time, injured Joe Allen. He actually came on as a left winger, but his introduction couldn't change anything as we still went on to lose that match 2-1. 

In the 14-15 season, Smith was loaned to Swindon Town of League One for the whole of the season. Only two days after officially being Swindon's player, he started and played the whole match against Scunthorpe United, ending as a 3-1 win. Still, the loan was cut short as he only played 10 matches leading up to the termination on 20 October. This possibly had to do with the clause stating that the youth players must get at least 75% of the matches of the season or a penalty will be given.

His return to Liverpool probably wasn't as good as it should have been, with him nearly becoming a free transfer after Liverpool gave him a new deal but he did not want to accept it. Still the club held onto the registration to at least get a compensation fee but he finally did sign with the club again on the 17th of November 2015. In December, he came on for Moreno in the 6-1 win, at the time he came on 5-1, against Southampton and assisted Divock Origi to help him complete his hattrick and round off the match. After scoring his first and only goal for the club against Exeter City in the FA Cup, things somewhat went downhill. Yes, he did assist Joe Allen quite nicely against Exeter in the replay, but his weaknesses were somewhat exposed.

If you thought it was bad when Moreno would camp out farther up the pitch, Smith practically lived there, meaning that he abandoned his defensive duties much more than Moreno would. Although his crosses were very good, that's not honestly all we needed him for. This is a very good move for him since it will give him a possibly better time to play and develop into a good fullback. Maybe then he might come back.

YNWA, Brad. Do us proud with the Cherries.